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Witness the Power of Social Media

Just today on Twitter I was alerted to this post from March where a proud daddy and Drupal module developer annonuced the birth of his first son. Go ahead and check out the cute baby picture, I will wait...

If you scroll down a little you will see a comment titled "instead of writing this". The commenter states that Manuel should have been busy writing documentation for his FREE, open source image gallery module instead of writing such useless drivel. Obviously the commenters needs far outweigh the joy and pride of a new father;)

If the commenter had understood the open source ethic, instead of just expecting something for nothing, he would have written the documentation and submitted it with a note of gratitude and congratulations. Unfortunately, the posters true colors are revealed in his post, and we all get to learn a lesson.

The lesson for us is this: Even though the post and follow up comment were written in March, we are talking about it six months later. Someone, somewhere was looking for information on the gallery module, stumbled across the offensive post and shared it with his circle via Twitter. I shared it with my circle, and others shared as well. When we post online, it is there forever. Even if the site that we posted on disappears, our online activities live on in the Google cache and various archives around the web. Our misdeeds and missteps can be tracked down and brought back to life long after we have forgotten the incident.

My advice; watch your words, watch your attitude and watch your heart when you deal with other people, whether online or in person. No matter how much you try to cover up bad behavior, it will come back and bite you in the end.